Dust Experiment in the Barn

When Officer William Medley took the stand at Lizzie’s jury trial, he testified that he arrived at the Borden house about 11:45 a.m. the morning of the murders. He then waited outside a minute or two for Deputy Marshal Fleet to show up before entering the house. He first went down into the cellar to look around, then came up through the sitting room to view Andrew’s body, then climbed the stairs to view Abby’s body. Then he went to the closed door of Lizzie’s bedroom and knocked.

Medley then had a brief conversation with Lizzie, asking her several questions, including where she was when Andrew was killed. She told him she had been up in the barn, but Medley must not have been satisfied with this reply, for after coming down into the kitchen and talking with a Bridget for a minute, he decided he should go up into the barn to check out Lizzie’s story, a choice Knowlton praised at the trial as Medley having “his wits about him.” Medley estimated he got to the barn about eight to ten minutes after he went into the house, so it was somewhere between 11:55 a.m. and 12 noon. He said he found the barn door closed, and to open it he had to take a pin from a hasp. This is how he described what he did next:

“I went upstairs until I reached about three or four steps from the top, and while there part of my body was above the floor, above the level of the floor, I looked around the barn to see if there was any evidence of anything having been disturbed, and I didn’t notice that anything had or seemed to have been disturbed … I stooped down low to [look across the bottom of the barn floor] to see if I could discern any marks on the floor of the barn having been made there … I didn’t see any, and I reached out my hand to see if I could make an impression on the floor of the barn, and I did this by putting my hand down … and found that I made an impression on the barn floor [on the] accumulated hay dust and other dust.”

He added that he could “distinctly” see his handprint in the dust. “Then,” he continued, “I stepped up on the top and took four or five steps on the outer edge of the barn floor, the edge nearest the stairs, then came up to see if I could discern those, and I did … by stooping down and casting my eye on a level with the barn floor, and I could see them plainly.” He said he saw no other footprints.

On the same day, the Fall River Daily Globe had this to say: “Then comes the question of dust on the barn loft. In this matter, the police must be more at sea, because so many persons are positive that they were the first to study the loft, when in reality there can be but one who was first. Officer Medley, Benjamin Buffinton, Mr. John Donnelly and others all looked over the second floor of the stable. Some noticed tracks in the dirt which accumulated, and some did not.”

Yet, whether others considered Medley’s experiment conclusive proof that Lizzie had not been up in the barn and thus had lied to police, it was apparently conclusive enough to the district attorney, and Hosea Knowlton didn’t hesitate to put Medley on the stand to relate his story. He likely came to regret that decision.

Witnesses Invalidate Medley’s Experiment

By 11:15 a.m. on August 4th, only five minutes after an alarmed Lizzie called Bridget downstairs, news was starting to race along Second Street about a “stabbing affair” at the Borden house, and, over the next half-hour, numerous people began streaming toward the house. By 11:30 or thereabouts, many of the most curious were boldly walking into the yard, and some even entered the barn to have a look around. A steam engineer named Alfred Clarkson testified that he had arrived at the Borden house at about 11:30 that morning (although he admitted that he had at one time thought it was more like 11:35, and at the preliminary hearing he had guessed it was about 11:40), where he wandered about the yard for a bit. He testified that it was about seven or eight minutes after his arrival that he went into the open door of the barn along with Deputy Sheriff Wixon, one of the first law enforcement officers on the scene. While Wixon himself apparently did not later recall going into the barn, according to Clarkson, the deputy remained downstairs as Clarkson climbed up into the hay loft and found three other men already up there, men he estimated to be in their early 20s. He didn’t recognize them, but he knew they were not police officers. He also said he saw some smashed down hay, “as if a man had laid there.” (Another witness at the preliminary hearing, John Donnelly would also say he noticed a man-size print of smashed down hay when he went up in the barn later.)

Clarkson said that after looking around a bit, he came down the stairs and went back out into the yard. He eventually saw Deputy Marshal Fleet arrive at 11:45, which would be consistent with Clarkson’s arrival time of 11:30 to 11:35. His early time of arrival was also corroborated by Charles Sawyer, who had been assigned to guard the back door of the house by George Allen, the first officer to arrive, and who testified that Clarkson was one of the first people he saw enter the yard.

Another defense witness, a reporter for The Fall River Daily News named Walter Stevens, took the stand to say that he had arrived at the Borden House along with Officer Michael Mullaly, who testified he got to the house at 11:37. (Mullaly checked his watch just before he entered the gate.) After walking around the yard for a few minutes, Stevens was allowed into the house, one of three reporters who were allowed inside. After looking around inside the house and viewing the bodies, he was standing near the back entry when Officer Medley entered the house for the first time (just after 11:45). Stevens exited the house only a minute or two afterward and decided to head out to the barn. He himself did not go up into the loft but while he was downstairs in the barn, he said he could hear several people going up the stairs into the loft. As Medley didn’t go out to the barn until after he spent time in the house speaking to Lizzie, Stevens clearly got to the barn before him.

The next witnesses to be called were two young men, ages 16 and 18, Everett Brown and Thomas Barlow. Brown was first and claimed he and Barlow were walking down Second Street, generally goofing off, when they heard the news that someone had been killed at the Borden house. They headed there and saw Officer Patrick Doherty going through the gate of the Borden house as he left to find a telephone to inform Marshal Hilliard about the fresh discovery of Mrs. Borden’s body. As Doherty arrived at the house at about 11:30 (or a minute or two after), and left less than five minutes later, Barlow and Brown must have arrived at about 11:35.

Brown testified that he and his equally curious friend first tried to get into the house, but when Sawyer wouldn’t let them in, they went out to the barn, opened the door and went inside. They then stood at the bottom of the stairs, daring each other to go up (Barlow told Brown he was afraid “someone might drop an axe on him”), but eventually they went up and walked around, looking out a window then going “over to the hay.” He said they were up in the barn about “five minutes.” They then went out into the yard and walked around the house to try to see into the windows and eventually went back toward the barn to “stand in front of the big door on the west side of the barn.” While standing there, Brown said he saw Officer Fleet arrive. (Fleet testified he arrived at 11:45.) Apparently, Fleet told one of his officers to clear the yard because Brown said it was that point that “we got put out of the yard … everybody that was there.”

Thomas Barlow followed his friend up to the stand and corroborated Brown’s testimony, referring to “me and Brownie,” (as the pair were to become famously known in the press). He described the game they played as they headed down Second Street, playing “going down” in which each took turns pushing the other off the sidewalk. Barlow was the one who opened the Bordens’ barn door, describing a “pin like” thing that he removed from the hasp to open it. They went upstairs to the loft, looked out the window, just as Brown had said, adding that they “looked in under the hay,” turning the hay over, looking “to see if anybody was in there.” He said that as they went out, he shut the door and replaced the pin. When Charles Sawyer was on the stand he was not asked if he remembered talking to Brown or Barlow specifically, but he did say there were “lots” of boys moving about the yard soon after the murders.

From the above testimony, it’s clear that Everett and Barlow were actually the first up into the barn loft, somewhere around 11:35. They soon came down, shut the door behind them, but as they were busy in the yard, trying to peer into the windows of the house, three other young men re-opened the barn door and headed up into the loft as well, leaving the door wide open behind them. While they were up in the loft, first Clarkson and Wixon entered through the open door, with Clarkson going up the stairs to encounter the three men who got up there before him, and a few minutes later Stevens wandered into the barn and heard others thumping up (or perhaps down) the stairs as well. It would also appear that as the last of this bunch of inquisitive men exited the barn, one of them decided to close the door and replace the pin in the hasp just as Barlow had done. And, because Fleet had cleared the yard when he arrived at 11:45, no others were able to get in the barn for a good ten minutes, perhaps allowing the dust that had been stirred up by the troop of onlookers to settle. Then, just before 12 noon, Medley went out to the barn, found the closed door, and went inside to perform his experiment, assuming that no others had been up in the loft before him.

None of the naysayers deterred Knowlton from insisting at the trial that Medley was first to study the barn loft, and that his experiment was valid proof Lizzie had not been up there an hour earlier. He defended this claim by asserting that everyone else who testified for the defense was wrong about the time they went into the barn. (“People do not notice the flight of time in ordinary and deliberate events.”) Only Medley was right about the time he arrived. How did Knowlton know this? First, because first Medley would never commit perjury (the implication being the other witnesses would), and second, Medley said when he got to the barn the door was shut, and everyone else—“excepting those wonderful boy detectives”—said the barn door was open. (He seemed not to consider that the unidentified others seen up in the barn loft by Clarkson may have, like Barlow, closed the door on their way out.) As for the testimony of Brown and Everett, Knowlton declared, “I dismiss, with scarcely a word of comment.” Why? Because Barlow said he thought the air was “cooler” in the barn than it was outside. This did not fit Knowlton’s theory at all. “Out upon such testimony!” he cried. “It is not worth the weight of consideration at all. If it happened, it never happened before Medley. Medley was the first one there.”

Either way, actual evidence existed that Lizzie did go up into the barn that morning (the sighting of her returning from the barn by Hyman Lubinsky). The only proof Knowlton offered for his insistence that she hadn’t been up there was Medley’s dust experiment, which was rendered thoroughly irrelevant by defense witnesses. In his book, The Case Against Lizzie Borden, William Spencer argued that putting Medley on the stand was ultimately harmful to the prosecution’s case, saying not only did the jury not believe him, but his discredited testimony “added to the defense’s allegations of a too-quick focus on Lizzie Borden … [and] may have also helped the jury lean toward police incompetence in the case, or even police bias.”

Author’s Take

Medley’s dust experiment was, in my book, a clever piece of detection. One can imagine how giddy he felt at the finding; after all, who doesn’t want to be the police officer who is able to crack the case early? The problem was not the experiment; the problem was having such confidence in Medley’s interpretation that it appears police didn’t bother to learn if others had been in the barn before him to know if his interpretation was legitimate. The other problem was Knowlton’s refusal to accept that Medley could have been wrong and therefore calling defense witnesses either mistaken or liars. (He did this continually with witnesses who undermined his theories.) As Spencer noted, these are clear symptoms of police bias.

Even though a witness reported seeing Lizzie return from the barn, it could still be true that Lizzie didn’t spend time in the loft as claimed. Dust experiment or not, Lizzie could indeed be guilty of killing her parents. But it’s difficult to trust police efforts to prove it, or to have faith in the “evidence” they found, when they continually point to bias and reliance on faulty interpretation of things like Medley’s dust experiment. If they had pursued the case in a more objective manner, on guard for bias instead of letting it run away with them, then they may have been able to legitimately prove guilt, whether Lizzie or someone else.